James Walvin – Why Slavery Matters: Atlantic Slavery and the Rise of Western Power
Tuesday, September 14, 2021Lecture Series
7:30 pm CEST
In the past two years there has been an unprecedented rise in interest and argument about slavery - largely on the back of the BLM movement and the brutal killing of George Floyd. African slavery in the Americas matters for a multitude of reasons. It affected three continents, over four centuries - and saw more than 12 million Africans loaded onto Atlantic slave ships. It was also basic to the rise of major powers in Europe (Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France and Britain) and across the Americas. Yet the system which created such power - and wealth - was brought to its knees in the space of a few decades in the 19th century. Slavery was regarded as essential in – say 1750: a century later, it was doomed. Why?
James Walvin is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of York and recently was Distinguished Fellow at the Huntington Library in California. He has written widely on the history of slavery and on modern British social history. His book Black and White, won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, and in 2008 he was awarded an O.B.E. for services to scholarship.
This event is part of the Global Histories of Migration lecture series and funded by the Mellon Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement and Education.
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